Chester County churches reach out to inactive congregants

Dressed in their Sunday best, traditionally families filed into their respective houses of worship every weekend, but churches today seemingly have fewer people in the pews.

“That general observation is true,” said the Rev. John Neider, the pastor of outreach ministries at Hopewell United Methodist Church in East Brandywine. “Churches in America are struggling, if the struggle is defined as members.”

About 39 percent of adult Americans said they attend a religious service at least once a week according to a 2007 poll done by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, but in the same survey 71 percent said they believe in God.

“That is a curious phenomenon,” said Neider, “How do we engage them? They do believe in God but they don’t seem to be engaging?”

So Neider has started a number of programs at Hopewell that reach the community outside the church walls including a Bible study in the park, a breakfast discussion group, Celebrate Recovery and youth programs.

Celebrate Recovery is the oldest program as it started about 15 years ago from a very small group and has grown to be very successful. It’s helps people work through their hurts, habits and hang-ups.

“We are not called to fix each other, but we are called to walk alongside our sisters and brothers,” said Neider. “Our program runs anywhere from 20-30 people and at least half of the people that attend are not members of Hopewell.” And some are not members of any church.

St. Norbert’s Catholic Church in Easttown also instituted programs to bring congregants back to the faith. Three years ago the parish’s pastor asked Peggy Kravitz to be chairman of the evangelical committee.

“Your Catholic message is to spread the gospel,” said Kravitz. “And the thing is that the new evangelization is no longer in the mission fields, like Zambia or something like that, it’s reaching out to the people who are wandered away from the faith now.”

So the committee held training programs that taught the active parishioners how to reach out to those inactive Catholics by inviting them to a faith sharing group, a Bible study or other program.

“The goal is try to bring one person back to the church. We have so many great programs,” said Jim Ryan, another member of the committee.

St. Norbert’s also held a six-week program that was specifically geared toward the inactive Catholics and helping them work through whatever pulled them away from the faith.

“Some of the people that participated in that six-week program, it was some kind of hurt that had happened in their childhood” – like a divorce between parents or a crisis had happened and the church wasn’t helpful as it should have been. “But they always knew that there was something inherently true and beautiful in the Catholic Church, and they just didn’t know how to enter back in.”

But Kravitz said evangelizing is not about boosting the churches numbers.

“It isn’t just like a business model that we’re saying we need to get our quotas up or anything like that, she said. “Numbers isn’t the thing, you are reaching souls. You can’t count the seeds that you plant. You know you planted the seeds, and then you trust it to the Holy Spirit.”

Neider said that for the people that come to Hopewell’s programs, he is less worried about if the people start coming to weekend services again and more worried that the church is effectively meeting their immediate needs.

“What’s important is that we are extending our hand out and with the love of God,” said Neider.

Several other churches in Chester County didn’t respond to requests for comment. But speaking on behalf of the Catholic community in the area, Kravitz said some parishes stand out as doing a lot of evangelization.

“The shift had to be to mission, that we have to reach out to everyone,” she said. “And I think some of the parishes caught that fire a little quicker than others.”

Traditionally, churches have looked at numbers as a barometer of success, said Neider. And churches need congregants for financial reasons as well – that can’t be ignored.

“But there have been a variety of thought leaders that say we need to equally pay attention to other ways of engaging,” said Neider. “The real question is: are (the churches) being effective in fulfilling their mission?”